Coalition leader
Tony Abbott
will take a more interventionist approach to the public service if his side wins office in 2013, promising that bureaucrats will serve his government and not the other way round and that there will be no “silo instinct’’ separating government and business.

Mr Abbott also promised that the chairman of a prime minister’s business advisory council he would establish, former ABC and stock exchange chairman
Maurice Newman
, would be a key figure in ensuring government and the public service were more responsive to the needs of business.

In an interview with The Australian Financial Review, Mr Abbott said a Coalition government would expect the public service to begin implementing its promises – including the repeal of the carbon tax and tackling border protection – from day one.

In comments that may revive memories in Canberra of former prime minister
John Howard
’s clearing out of the senior ranks of the public service in 1996, Mr Abbott issued a blunt warning to public servants.

“Because what normally happens is that a government comes in, they’ve got all these policies and they rely for the implementation on the public service,’’ he said.

“There’s nothing wrong with that as such, but what I’d like to be able to say to the public service is, ‘Look, this is how we think it needs to be done.’ Rather than relying on them to tell us, I’d like to be in a position to tell them on day one.

“The executive government depends on the public service for its administration, but the more authoritatively the government of the day can speak to the public service, the more likely it is that the public service will administer your policy in a way which recognises its spirit and its letter.

“One of the things I often used to think in government, particularly when I was listening to the public service talk about business regulation, was that the people who make the rules never have to live under them. That’s a problem."

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The business advisory council plan is modelled on existing high-level advisory groups, such as the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council founded by Mr Howard in 1998. Mr Abbott said it would meet at least three times a year.

The prime ministerial council, which was quietly announced in November, would comprise senior cabinet ministers, captains of industry and senior public servants.

Mr Abbott announced a productivity priorities working group led by Queensland Liberal MP
Steven Ciobo
. It had been tasked with taking previously announced policies, including those aimed at red-tape reduction, to business to “talk to business about actually making that work", he said.

“I want to be able to go in with a much more detailed practical blueprint than you normally get when you’ve just got policies, as it were. That’s what Ciobo is consulting on. Maurice Newman will obviously be a key person in all that after the election, should we win it,’’ Mr Abbott told the Financial Review.

“One of the things I think we need to try to move towards is a situation where there is much greater cross-pollination between the public and private sectors," he said.

“This kind of silo instinct doesn’t just exist within government. It exists between government and large swathes of the real life of our country beyond government."

Business Council of Australia acting chief executive
Maria Tarrant
said Australia’s public service was of high quality, but there was always room for improvement.

Mr Abbott said small business would not be excluded by “sweetheart" deals between big business, government and unions.

“Increasing exchanges between the public service and business would assist in enhancing the appreciation and understanding of the business environment and the reality of progressing policy in the public service,’’ she said.

“Mechanisms such as the Coalition’s proposed business advisory council can be useful ways of contributing to a greater appreciation of the impact of government policy on the business environment."

“I am not into big government, big business and big unions doing sweetheart deals with each other that exclude small business, the little platoons of our society, so to speak.’’

Mr Abbott has confirmed he has a candidate in mind to head a commission of audit, but refused to divulge who as it was “far too early to say who it might be".